Toni’s Story
As the world begins to feel like a return to normality is just on the horizon and with many of us coming back to our offices and places of work we took the opportunity to sit down with our awesome MD Toni Taylor to take a look behind the curtain and hear from her what her first year as a business owner has been like in the face of a global pandemic. But most importantly how Toni overcame the challenges, the lessons she’s learned, and why the business is now thriving as a result.
To tell the story of Tru talent and this past year we must first jump back a little further to where Toni’s journey began.
Toni had been honing her skills in both recruitment and leadership from the very beginning of her career. Her journey began at Protect Line, in its early years, where she quickly became an influential member of the team and played a key part in the growth of the company. At the time she left as Recruitment Manager the company had grown from an original 8 members to over 100 employees and was going from strength to strength. Toni then took these skills and experiences and stepped into the recruitment agency world where she once again became a key leader during her time at both Rock and Rise Recruitment.
During her time she grew and developed teams with a vision to deliver the best service to clients and candidates possible while always being authentic, honest, and not being afraid to do things a little differently. Toni will tell you that some things in life and business happen organically and Tru Talent is one of those stories. But don’t be mistaken, organic doesn’t mean without careful planning and a lot of hard work. In late 2019 the opportunity to buy the business that Toni was already a key leader in (Rise Recruitment) became available due to the current owner deciding to move on to peruse a lifelong dream.
Toni confidently stepped forward with the purchase of the business and a new vision for what a recruitment agency could really be. This would not just be a rebrand and a change of ownership but a total reevaluation of the agency model but more importantly how a business could be built as a team rather than just imparted from top-down. Her confidence in taking on the mantel came from the fact that over the past years she had already carefully built a team who were exactly the people she wanted around her as she began to build her own agency.
Toni shared “ I didn’t want to do it on my own, I wanted to try doing things differently and involve the entire team as I set about building a new business and the vision for our future. Everyone's voice was heard and opinions were valued in this process. We inherited a legacy but we designed what our future would be.” We’re so lucky here at Tru Talent to genially love the people we work with and the work we do. Each one of us would tell you that it is because of Toni’s leadership and the culture she has built.
We are so proud to say that we built this business together, a little piece of all of us exists within every aspect of the business from the branding and visuals to our steadfast approach to how we treat and value our clients and candidates and why each one is treated as a human being and never as a number or a paycheque.
Together we have built something authentic and true (pardon the pun) and that is what our clients and candidates wanted along with the support they needed to navigate the hiring landscape. We understand that we change lives with the work we do and this is something each one of us takes seriously and where we find deep joy in seeing our client's companies flourish as a result of a new hire and seeing our candidates finally land their dream job.
We can’t talk about the birth of Tru Talent and its first year without mentioning the impact of covid 19 on our journey. Just as our new business was beginning to flourish with great new clients joining us every week and placing great candidates in their dream jobs we were then hit with the first lockdown and our business and the world changed forever.
In those early days, it would have been easy to panic, make irrational decisions and only focus on ourselves, however, Toni decided to chose, as always, to put our clients and candidates first. We held strong to our authentic personal approach in everything we do which yes takes more time, more care, more energy, and yes it doesn’t always have a direct monetary return BUT it is what we choose to do and who we choose to be for our clients and candidates. We have and always will continue to put people before profit and the pandemic was more than a test to show that we are people of our word and would hold fast to the decisions and mission we had laid before us. If we’re completely transparent it seemed like that was to our detriment to begin with.
When you decide to care about those who choose to work with you it makes a massive difference on both how we feel as employees but even better it develops real trust with everyone who works with us. As a result of the decisions we made and the service we continued to deliver during the pandemic our business is now exploding with unprecedented growth, more new clients choosing us than ever before, and the best talent across automotive, construction, temporary staff, and creative choosing us as their agency of choice when looking to make that important move to a new position.
It most certainly hasn’t been easy or without cold sweats and sleepless nights but we are seeing first-hand that if you are who you say you are and do what you say you’ll do and truly put people before profits the success (and big success) comes as the by-product. Please believe that good times are ahead and know that we’re here to enjoy them with you every step of the way.
